GARDAI have succeeded in seizing property worth about £309,000 and an £85,000 car belonging to two men suspected of being involved in the murder of the journalist Veronica Guerin.
In the first High Court order of its kind, a receiver was appointed yesterday to dispose of the property, a two-bedroom apartment on Dublin's quays and a Victorian house converted into flats at Fairview in the north of the city.
Gardai believe the man who owns the property rode the motorcycle from which a gunman alighted and shot dead Ms Guerin at traffic lights on the Naas dual carriageway last June.
He is currently believed to be in Gran Canaria, staying in an apartment complex with more than a dozen other Dublin criminal figures.
The man has a criminal record for armed robbery and has had no visible means of income since being released from Portlaoise Prison four years ago. He enjoyed an ostentatious life-style, holidaying abroad regularly while acquiring property and other expensive belongings. He left Dublin last summer and has not returned.
He bought the apartment on Dublin's quays for slightly more than £60,000 and the house in Fairview for £170,000 in cash in 1994. Since then the combined value of the properties has risen to about £300,000.
The High Court, sitting in camera yesterday, agreed to the appointment of a receiver to dispose of the properties and for the proceeds of the sale to be sequestrated by the State.
The case before the High Court yesterday is the first to succeed under the Government's proceeds of crime legislation introduced after Ms Guerin's murder. Previous assets seizures in relation to the Guerin case were carried out under the Revenue Act for suspected tax evasion.
Yesterday's case was brought by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), the specialist' unit of gardai, Customs officers and Revenue officials set up to uncover and seize proceeds of crime.
The case had taken several months to complete. Gardai anticipate that it will be followed shortly by similar cases.
Also yesterday, in a separate case at Kilmainham District Court, a Mercedes Benz car belonging to another leading suspect in the Guerin murder was ordered to be handed over to the finance company which has an outstand ing loan on the car.
The car has an estimated value of £85,000. It was abandoned by the suspect when he too left the State because of Garda pressure after Ms Guerin's murder.
Gardai investigating the murder discovered the vehicle during a raid on a house in west Dublin last September and impounded it. Yesterday the District Court ordered that it be handed over to Anglo Irish Bank so it can recoup a loan, understood to have been about £50,000, on the car.
The man who owned the car was well-known to Ms Guerin and she used information he gave her to write stories about the Dublin underworld.
It is believed she inadvertently let him know about the traffic charge she was facing at Naas District Court on the day of her murder. Gardai believe the man passed this information on to the leader of a major drugs-importing gang who wanted to murder Ms Guerin because she had begun to expose his activities.
Ms Guerin was apparently unaware that her contact - the owner of the Mercedes - and the leader of the drugs gang were close associates. Ms Guerin's contact is understood to be running a small bar in a southern Spanish holiday resort.